In honour of the Large Hadron Collider ....

... something a bit science-ey today

Some background first - you remember the circle journal I took part in earlier this year with a bunch of online buddies from the UKStampers forum? Well, one of the ladies taking part unfortunately never got her book back - it got lost in the post about half way through the process. It's always upsetting when that happens.

Well, the rest of us - ably led by Hazel - have finally got our butts in gear and arranged to replace the lost book. The brief: make a 3" x 5" tag, and a 3.25" x 5.75" envelope to keep the tag in, with a subject of "headwear / hats" - and send on to Hazel by the end of this month, who will bind all the envies into a book for Petra.

All well and good.

Tag cut - check. Envelope made - check. Hats.... hats???? I don't know where to start with "hats"!

I was really stumped. Until I started thinking about the LHC. And black holes (a re-watching of the Improssible Planet / Satan Pit Dr Who episodes last night all snuggled up with my lovely boyfriend might have helped....). And how Albert Einstein was often pictured with a fedora style hat.

So - I went searching for a quote.

and I found a perfect one :)


.... as one's hat keeps blowing off!"

It's actually a Woody Allen quote, but I reckon it could pass for Einstein's words of wisdom easily enough, don't you? :)

I found the classic photo of Albert on his bicycle (and imagined him furiously pedalling to try to reach the speed of light :) ) and cut him a little hat out of black felt.



I had much fun making the backgrounds for the tag and envelope.

Firstly I stamped my over-used Third Coast celestial swirls and stars using Ranger paint dabbers. Usually when I do this "starry sky" type effect I use just silver and pearl dabbers - but Petra loves colour so I used some colourful pastel paints aswell - aqua, pink sherbert and cool peri. Gorgeous colours.

Once the paint was all dry I sprayed all of the card with glimmer mists in blue, purple, patina and walnut gold. As the glimmer mists dry, the paint on the stamped images resists the colour.

I then overstamped with cool scientific stamps (from Above the Mark and Club Stamp) in bright pink and purple Stazon inks - and finally sponged purple distress ink through stencil waste in selected areas.

You can see the sparkle of the glimmer mists a little better in this close up:

Once the tag had been collaged with the image of Einstein, and his felt hat, I added "wind" swirls with white pigment ink using a Fantastix applicator. The ribbons threaded through eyelets to the left of the tag are to be used to extract the tag from its envelope, but they also carry on the whole "blowing in the wind" feel. I don't tend to add ribbons to a project just for the sake of it - so I like it if they support the narrative in some way.

Oh - and the envelope was finished off with a little wheel thing from Tim Holtz's Idea-ology range of embellishments. It is held on with a brad but the brad back is covered with a small flat magnet, which is what keeps the envelope closed.

This was fun - and I've just realised that it fits this week's Wednesday stamper theme too - which is a bonus :)

I know the new book won't be quite the same as if Petra had got her own circle journal back - but hopefully it will go some way to making up for the unfortunate disappearance of the original journal.